The Thammasat University Library has acquired a new book that should be useful for students interested in English literature, criminology, cultural studies, gender studies, and related subjects.
Agatha Christie: A Companion to the Mystery Fiction is by J.C. Bernthal, a visiting fellow at the University of Suffolk, the United Kingdom.
The TU Library collection includes a number of books by and about Agatha Christie.
Agatha Christie wrote 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, including those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She has been called the Queen of Crime. As of 2020, the Guinness World Records has listed Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, with her novels selling over two billion copies in 44 languages. Half the sales are of English-language editions, and the remainder are translations.
Part of the reason for her popularity is the carefully planned story lines about how murders were committed and why. Christie knew a lot about poisons, and over 80 characters die from poisoning in her fiction.
Here are some quotes from her books, some of which are in the TU Library collection:
- Spider’s Web (1956)
Oh dear, I never realized what a terrible lot of explaining one has to do in a murder!
- LIFE magazine (1956)
I specialize in murders of quiet, domestic interest.
- The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)
Every murderer is probably somebody’s old friend… I am not keeping back facts. Every fact that I know is in your possession. You can draw your own deductions from them…I did not deceive you, mon ami. At most, I permitted you to deceive yourself.
Hercule Poirot
- The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)
Understand this, I mean to arrive at the truth. The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it.
Hercule Poirot
- The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928)
I do not argue with obstinate men. I act in spite of them.
Hercule Poirot
- Peril at End House (1932)
I like to inquire into everything. Hercule Poirot is a good dog. The good dog follows the scent, and if, regrettably, there is no scent to follow, he noses around — seeking always something that is not very nice.
Hercule Poirot
- Murder on the Orient Express (1934)
I have the little idea, my friend, that this is a crime very carefully planned and staged. It is a far-sighted, long-headed crime. It is not — how shall I express it? — a Latin crime. It is a crime that shows traces of a cool, resourceful, deliberate brain — I think an Anglo-Saxon brain.
The impossible cannot have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.
Hercule Poirot
If you confront anyone who has lied with the truth, they usually admit it — often out of sheer surprise. It is only necessary to guess right to produce your effect.
“I like to see an angry Englishman,” said Poirot. “They are very amusing. The more emotional they feel the less command they have of language.”
Hercule Poirot
- Death in the Clouds (1935)
An Englishman thinks first of his work — his job, he calls it — and then of his sport, and last — a good way last — of his wife.
‘If one approaches a problem with order and method there should be no difficulty in solving it — none whatever,’ said Poirot severely.
I have, perhaps, too professional a point of view where deaths are concerned. They are divided, in my mind, into two classes — deaths which are my affair and deaths which are not my affair — and though the latter class is infinitely more numerous — nevertheless whenever I come in contact with death I am like the dog who lifts his head and sniffs the scent.
- The ABC Murders (1936)
Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions.
- Death on the Nile (1937)
How true is the saying that man was forced to invent work in order to escape the strain of having to think.
“There’s no reason why women shouldn’t behave like rational beings,” said Simon stolidly.
Poirot said dryly:
“Quite frequently they do. That is even more upsetting!”
Once I went professionally to an archaeological expedition–and I learnt something there. In the course of an excavation, when something comes up out of the ground, everything is cleared away very carefully all around it. You take away the loose earth, and you scrape here and there with a knife until finally your object is there, all alone, ready to be drawn and photographed with no extraneous matter confusing it. That is what I have been seeking to do–clear away the extraneous matter so that we can see the truth–the naked shining truth.
Hercule Poirot
- N or M? (1941)
Courage is the resolution to face the unforeseen.
Fear is incomplete knowledge.
The rottenness comes from within.
Let us think only of the good days that are to come.
It’s as easy to utter lies as truth.
Proof must be solid to break walls of facts.
- A Murder is Announced (1950)
“I always feel that the young doctors are only too anxious to experiment. After they’ve whipped out all our teeth, and administered quantities of very peculiar glands, and removed bits of our insides, they then confess that nothing can be done for us. I really prefer the old-fashioned remedy of big black bottles of medicine. After all, one can always pour those down the sink.”
“No,” said Miss Marple. “Murder isn’t a game.
Weak and kindly people are often very treacherous. And if they’ve got a grudge against life it saps the little moral strength that they may posses.
One forgets how human murderers are.
It all came together then, you see — all the various isolated bits — and made a coherent pattern.
- After the Funeral (1953)
What any woman saw in some particular man was beyond the comprehension of the average intelligent male. It just was so. A woman who could be intelligent about everything else in the world could be a complete fool when it came to some particular man.
Any medical man who predicts exactly when a patient will die, or exactly how long he will live, is bound to make a fool of himself. The human factor is always incalculable. The weak have often unexpected powers of resistance, the strong sometimes succumb.
There were to be no short cuts to the truth. Instead he would have to adopt a longer, but a reasonably sure method. There would have to be conversation. Much conversation. For in the long run, either through a lie, or through truth, people were bound to give themselves away…
How averse human beings were ever to admit ignorance!
Men always tell such silly lies.
It shows you, Madame, the dangers of conversation. It is a profound belief of mine that if you can induce a person to talk to you for long enough, on any subject whatever, sooner or later they will give themselves away.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)